How Personal Factors Influence Gym Performance
Little Backstory
In my previous project, I wanted to know what was optimal regarding sets and reps for someone like me to use to inspire my workout routine. However, I later found this data not as helpful after learning that people may have different goals than me in the gym.
The three most common ones are Endurance(Light weights but higher repetitions), Often not to build muscle but to increase their ability to go for prolonged workouts. Then there is Hypertrophy(Medium Weights with Average repetitions), Which allows the individual to go for aesthetics and strength as it increases body mass quickly. Then there is Strength (Heavyweights and shorter repetitions), which focuses on trying quick bursts and less on mass but more on actually lifting.
This goal is different for everybody, and by not considering it, I couldn’t use it as inspiration towards my workout. I decided to then go towards fixing my form. I added questions about body weight and gym experience to allow for more analytical insights beyond just average weight lifted. This lets me explore relationships like strength relative to body weight and whether training volume increases with experience. These additions make the data more meaningful and less predictable.
Who was involved with collecting data for your project
As my data involved using an identifier for an individual while keeping them anonymous, I kept the form logging to myself this time just so each new person would be labelled an iteration of P01 and so forth. This helped keep it consistent and would reduce the cleaning I must do for the CSV. However, this time, I needed their goal and weight, which meant I had to go up to a stranger (absolutely not.) or, in my case, log in my friend’s information. My friends who go to the gym vary in size for the study I recorded. This allowed me to get varying results however I was not able to find an individual who was focusing on endurance so the graphs only show that of hypertrophy and strength at this current moment.
Let’s get into it!
Does bodyweight affect how much someone lifts (in kg)
Here, we separated by the goals they were doing. For the strength part of my graph, my friend (P01), who had only been going to the gym for wo months at this point, was able to lift more than my other friend (P01), who had been going to the gym for 5 months. This is interesting because if we look at why, we can see that he weighs more in terms of his body weight. Leading me to believe that continuously lifting weights isn’t the only way to increase muscle. Dieting and metabolism play a considerable role, and this could lead to further research on what foods individuals eat in a day. It is a fascinating study that could enhance my perception of what it takes to be stronger.
Looking at hypertrophy, although both are lifting roughly the same weight and have been going for approximately the same amount of time, they are different in weight size. Now you may think “Oh, but you just said if you weigh more, then you should be lifting more”, while yes, that is true; we must also consider that individual P03 is also a female at birth. This indicates that males can lift more than their body weights compared to females. I am Looking further into how I can capture this and log it into my data.
There wasn’t much difference between the two groups. This graph is interesting because individuals who go for strength should be going for a lower rep amount and higher amount, which I may not have explained to them either. For future data points, I will reiterate the different goals since most guys will say strength without knowing what hypertrophy is.
“How do people differ in the amount of weight they move per workout?”
Here, I wanted to see how much volume each person was doing per workout, not just on average but across all their sessions. Each dot is one workout, and the boxplot behind it shows how spread out their volume is, with the middle line being their median. Even though P04 has been going to the gym longer than P01 and P02, their volume range is lower. This might show that experience alone doesn’t guarantee someone is pushing higher weight. It could also come down to consistency, workout intensity, or different training goals.
P03 has the widest spread, meaning their workouts vary a lot. This is probably because I recorded different workouts, not just focusing on one part of the body, showing that some parts of their body are lifting significantly lower weights. P02 has the smallest spread; this is due to the fact I recorded their workout for one particular part of their body. This information, paired with the others, won’t give me any information. We should look towards revising this question and including another categorical value of what part of the body they are working out.
This plot helps highlight workout patterns that would be hidden if I only looked at averages. It’s made me think about asking more questions like: “Are people sticking to a program?” or “Does consistency affect results more than intensity?”
Conclusion
I learned that comparing sets, reps, or volumes across people without knowing their goals can be misleading. Someone training for hypertrophy will naturally train differently than someone training for strength or endurance. Without this context, averages become meaningless. There are a lot of factors to consider when getting my optimal workout, and I want to research diets next.
